"Production" and "Mastering"

[healium]

What do people mean when they talk about the "mastering" on an album?

 

How do you judge mastering? What does good or bad mastering sound like?

 

Is sound "production" just the clarity and distinction between the layers?

 

How do you know good or bad "production"

[Veracohr]

'Production' would generally be considered the writing, arranging, recording and mixing of a song.

 

'Mastering', the way most people mean, is actually pre-mastering. It's basically applying a final gloss on the mix. The mastering engineer applies small (usually) amounts of EQ, dynamic processing, possibly manipulation of stereo spread, and (if mastering a whole album) matches the level of each song in an album.

 

Mastering engineers also generally try to make a mix louder, by applying compression and limiting. Unfortunately, most mainstream releases are hyper-compressed, with almost no dynamic range. They are incredibly loud, and most people find them fatiguing to listen to for very long. This practice started as an effort to get the music above the noise floor of vinyl records, back in the times before CDs. Unfortunately, it got out of control.

 

'Good' and 'bad' mastering are relative. It depends on an individual's preference. In my opinion, heavily compressed and limited music is bad mastering. To put it into relevant terms, Infected Mushroom's "IM The Supervisor" is bad mastering. It's too loud and compressed. It could be worse, actually, but it's too constantly loud in my opinion. If you really want to hear bad mastering, listen to Lamb of God's "New American Gospel". Highly distorted.

 

If you hear a song that sounds bad, sometimes it can be difficult to tell if the problem is in the mixing or the mastering. Become a good mixing or mastering engineer, and you can easily tell the difference. I don't know how else to tell.

 

Actual mastering, not pre-mastering, is the production of a master, which is the template disc that the CDs or records are produced from.

[healium]

Thanks for the description!

 

Is the parts where the artist pans sound and makes some sounds louder than others part of sound production?

 

An album like Koxbox "Dragon Tales" for instance has excellent layering and panning of sound, so I would say it has good sound production - is this right?

 

The mastering on that album then would be considered un-compressed?

 

I think I know what you mean about the "loud" sounding stuff...

[Stalker]

Mastering it's a human process to edit the signal of a track/album and give the final treatment before it's "released"

It involves the use of editors (waveform editors, track timeline editors, PQ editors, etc.), signal processors (EQ, compression, expansion, etc.), and media recorders (tape decks, CD burners, DVD burners, etc.)

 

While production is the creation. Some producers master their own productions, but it's two forms of art

[Stalker]

  Is the parts where the artist pans sound and makes some sounds louder than others part of sound production?

 

An album like Koxbox "Dragon Tales" for instance has excellent layering and panning of sound, so I would say it has good sound production - is this right?

 

 

645939[/snapback]

 

Yes, you can say it's part of the production. That's called mixing BUT depending of what musical style you are hearing the producer didn't do the mixing. This usually happens for ex with rock pop bands.

 

The "producer" (band) just writte, create and record their songs. And then a mixing enginner and a mastering enginner will take the songs and pan the sounds, give stereo treatment wildh etc. And the mastering enginner will finish up compressing, expanding etc

 

 

In eletronic music production the mixing is part of the production, so yes, you can assume that Koxbox's panned sounds it's part of the production

 

 

The mastering on that album then would be considered un-compressed?

No, there is no such term. The album tracks was probably compressed, maybe not, I don't own this album, but I'm 99% sure there was some compression involved

 

To analyse a good mastering, you have to be a sound enginner, or at least get the things rolling. It's a secret art and the best mastering jobs is those ones you cant "see" them or hear them....

 

The name's Stalker, Adrian Stalker

[Mike A]

Mastering engineers also generally try to make a mix louder, by applying compression and limiting. Unfortunately, most mainstream releases are hyper-compressed, with almost no dynamic range. They are incredibly loud, and most people find them fatiguing to listen to for very long. This practice started as an effort to get the music above the noise floor of vinyl records, back in the times before CDs. Unfortunately, it got out of control.

645495[/snapback]

I actually think it's a good thing.

I'm listening to some classical music cds and very old cds and it's a nightmare. Everything is suddenly loud, suddenly quiet. You can't just listen on a constant volume - you have to keep changing it. This is true especially when you are listening on headphones on on portable players (wanting to hear the outside, yet still hearing the music) or late at night when you want to hear everything but not keep everyone awake.

[Colin OOOD]

I actually think it's a good thing.

I'm listening to some classical music cds and very old cds and it's a nightmare. Everything is suddenly loud, suddenly quiet. You can't just listen on a constant volume - you have to keep changing it. This is true especially when you are listening on headphones on on portable players (wanting to hear the outside, yet still hearing the music) or late at night when you want to hear everything but not keep everyone awake.

646022[/snapback]

Classical music is generally not mastered to sound good either played quietly, or played where there is a lot of ambient noise, eg. outside. By its nature, an orchestra has a very wide dynamic range when heard live; at its quietest it can be barely audible, whilst other passages might have you ducking for cover, and it is obviously this dynamic range that gives orchestral performances much of their power.

 

If you pick eg. a symphony or other full-orchestra recording, find the quietest passage in the piece and turn up the volume until it's as loud as it would be if you were sat in front of the orchestra (probably louder than you normally listen), then listen to the whole thing, you'll get more of an idea of the power of the music than you would if you listened at a 'comfortable' volume. The loud bits should be LOUD! A recording compressed so that both pp solo piccolo and ff unison passages were clearly audible on iPod headphones when you're walking down a noisy city street (without the loud bits making your eardrums meet in the middle) would lose much of its impact if listened to on a decent hifi.

 

From what I gather, compression can be used when mastering a classical piece but I seem to remember reading that purists tend to prefer uncompressed recordings and can be good at recognising them. Radio stations invariably compress their signal before its broadcast, as many people listen in their cars where the high ambient noise level means that quieter passages would otherwise be inaudible, but this is usually done as sensitively as possible (although listening to Classic FM in the UK you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise!).

[Veracohr]

I actually think it's a good thing.

I'm listening to some classical music cds and very old cds and it's a nightmare. Everything is suddenly loud, suddenly quiet. You can't just listen on a constant volume - you have to keep changing it. This is true especially when you are listening on headphones on on portable players (wanting to hear the outside, yet still hearing the music) or late at night when you want to hear everything but not keep everyone awake.

646022[/snapback]

The problem lies in the way that music is listened to now. As was stated in a thread on another site, these days music has to compete with road noise, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, all sorts of sound, because music is most often listened to in the background. People don't usually just sit down and listen to music like in the days of yore.

 

Of course, comparing classical to hyper compressed pop is pretty extreme. Compare recordings from the mid-80s, say, to some of the stuff today. At that time, there was a healthy amount of compression generally being used, resulting in even mixes, but not the gain-maximizing limiting that is in use today. Classical music is a special case outside the normal realm of mastering.

 

Another example of over-compressed and limited music is Tool's 10,000 Days, if you're familiar with that album. I can only listen to a couple songs of it with headphones before my ears ache.

 

Most electronic music is pretty heavily compressed, and for the most part it's not too big a problem because electronic music doesn't typically have a whole lot of dynamic range inherent. But there's always that extreme and there's always someone who will go to it.

[Jikkenteki]

Yes, you can say it's part of the production. That's called mixing BUT depending of what musical style you are hearing the producer didn't do the mixing. This usually happens for ex with rock pop bands.

 

The "producer" (band) just writte, create and record their songs. And then a mixing enginner and a mastering enginner will take the songs and pan the sounds, give stereo treatment wildh etc. And the mastering enginner will finish up compressing, expanding etc

In eletronic music production the mixing is part of the production, so yes, you can assume that Koxbox's panned sounds it's part of the production

No, there is no such term. The album tracks was probably compressed, maybe not, I don't own this album, but I'm 99% sure there was some compression involved

 

To analyse a good mastering, you have to be a sound enginner, or at least get the things rolling. It's a secret art and the best mastering jobs is those ones you cant "see" them or hear them....

 

The name's Stalker, Adrian Stalker

645949[/snapback]

 

Since you brought mainstream music production into the conversation I'll point out that your use of the word "producer" is incorrect. The producer is technically the person in charge of the recording session and is more often than not, not the person making any music. The guys making and performing the music are the artists.... sorry this has just been a pet peeve of mine for ages.

 

As for what is mastering, the above posts summed it up pretty well, but you can think of it as a good wax job on a car. On a fine car it will make it shine just that little bit more, but on a piece of junk... well, its still just a piece of junk and everyone can see that.

[Time_Trap]

I actually think it's a good thing.

I'm listening to some classical music cds and very old cds and it's a nightmare. Everything is suddenly loud, suddenly quiet.

646022[/snapback]

That's how it's supposed to be mate...

[Stalker]

Since you brought mainstream music production into the conversation I'll point out that your use of the word "producer" is incorrect. The producer is technically the person in charge of the recording session and is more often than not, not the person making any music. The guys making and performing the music are the artists.... sorry this has just been a pet peeve of mine for ages.  

 

As for what is mastering, the above posts summed it up pretty well, but you can think of it as a good wax job on a car. On a fine car it will make it shine just that little bit more, but on a piece of junk... well, its still just a piece of junk and everyone can see that.

646052[/snapback]

Yes, I know that you are perfectly right

I should have made it clear thou.

Thats why I wrote inbetwen " " cause I wanted to maintain in the eletronic field concepts. Since we cal the artist as a producer

[healium]

Wow, this is very interesting!

 

So if you have un-compressed music you need to listen in to it loudly on a good stereo if that music has a large dynamic range?

 

What does it mean when an album sounds like all the sounds are comming from the same place, like there's no "space" between the sounds?

[Veracohr]

Wow, this is very interesting!

 

  So if you have un-compressed music you need to listen in to it loudly on a good stereo if that music has a large dynamic range?

 

    What does it mean when an album sounds like all the sounds are comming from the same place, like there's no "space" between the sounds?

646622[/snapback]

All commercial music, excepting possibly classical, is compressed. If you're listening to uncompressed music and you want to be able to hear everything, it is useful to be able to turn it up and not have any noises around you. But compression isn't just a tool for getting louder music. Compression during mastering, if done well, often has the effect of 'gluing' the mix together into a smooth overall sound.

 

When an album sounds like all the sounds are coming from the same place, assuming your stereo is wired properly, that means the producers (whether they wrote the music or not) made poor use of the magic of stereophonic sound. A good mix starts with a good arrangement, and forethought during the arranging process. A good producer will be thinking about panning and stereo sounds during the writing and arranging, and taking that into consideration.

 

There's also the matter of how a song is mixed, physically. It's a matter of often heated debate, but some people say that mixing "in the box" (in the DAW) results in a more narrow stereo spread than mixing through an analog console, even with hard panned sounds.